what I ate and other stories

Snack Trek: (MINI) APPLE CIDER DONUTS! (Snow-Line Orchard)

Loyal blog-readers know that I have been wanting to try an apple cider donut for… two or three months now. That’s an eon in dog years.

Today I visited lovely Lauren, and she happens to live very close to Oak Glen— apple country! (A little over an hour east of Los Angeles.)

Mr. Tea was also a member of the expedition (he gets the moniker again today because he came armed with a travel mug of tea). He used to work at an apple-place in New England, so he was a great asset to us. An apple country Sherpa. Something like that. (We didn’t make him lug any apples.)

We made several stops to look at/eat apples & curios, but in this post I’ll focus on the donuts. There will be another for everything else.

We’d already done our research and found that Snow-Line Orchard was the only one with apple cider donuts, but this sign was still helpful.

I'm always looking for wooden men.

FYI the cherry apple cider was no bueno. It tasted like cough syrup. We were all in agreement on that one. (But the regular cider was great!)

When we got to Snow-Line, we were greeted by beautiful fall foliage-ness. YES.

Nice sky, too.

I don’t know if it’s the climate or the types of trees or a little of both, but there was a whole lot more autumn going on in Oak Glen than there is in LA.

The donut line (yes, there is a special line for the donuts) was out the door. As we waited, we got to watch the donuts being made by a crazy plop-out-the-donuts conveyor belt fryer machine. (Manned by two teen-looking dudes.)

End of the line for the donuts. Almost front of the line for us.

From the white circle-thing, one of the aforementioned dudes scooped the donuts into a bag, swooshed a cinnamon sugar mix into it, and shook it up.

At the front of the line, it was decision time: How many donuts should we get?

Big life choices.

Although you can’t see it in this picture, Snow-Line has an A rating from the health department. That means roach-free donuts, I guess. Good news for all you roach haters. On a cuter note, I love that apple heart image. (I’m a sucker for apple stuff– in case my username didn’t tip you off, my name has the word “apple” in it.)

We ordered a bag of 12 mini apple cider donuts– that’s 4 each, for the math deficient–and a small bottle of cold cider to share. (A bunch of kids were getting bags of their own. Paging Jamie Oliver…)

Apple thangs.

The cider is “lightly pasteurized,” and Mr. Tea wondered what that process involves. Candles? Romance? We’ll never know now, because I didn’t notice the cider mill until we were driving away. (It was next to the bathrooms.) (Whatever makes the cider delicious, man.)

And because you might be wondering how mini these mini donuts really are, here is one next to my small hand.

Yep, they're mini.

As far as the taste of the donuts– I didn’t really taste any apple-ness. It was more about the cinnamon sugar. That said, they were good and fresh and light and had a nice little outer crunch. Apparently the apple cider donuts at Mr. Tea’s former workplace were a whole different animal (not mini, for one thing), with a cake-ier consistency and more of an apple flavor. That’s a REALLY epic snack trek, but I’ll see what I can do. It’s on my bucket list.

Once again, many thanks to Lauren and Mr. Tea. Hopefully Lauren will post of a few of her selects. I’ll link ya to them. And hopefully Mr. Tea is drinking some right now, because he fought impending illness to join us. Be well, Mr. Tea!

In the next Oak Glen post, I’ll have a little something for the apple pie lovers. And the people who love horehounds and cleavage.

I need to get some horehounds and let you try them…you know, for research for this blog. They are really good, despite the weird name. Loved this post, can’t wait for the next one though. Going through my pics now and will post soon!!